Nintendo Land could have featured Star Fox, Excitebite, 1080 Snowboarding games

The Nintendo Land development team gave a post-mortem in a Japanese magazine, revealing thoughts on how the game came together, why some games are more deep than others, and why the game lacks online play.

Nintendo Land includes a number of mini-games, all branded with classic Nintendo IPs. However, not every game properly represented the IP it donned. Nintendo's Takayuki Shimamura, who served as co-director on the title, admitted that "some of the tie-ins, like Donkey Kong and Octopus, might be stretching it a little."

"Generally it was easy to match the gameplay from the prototypes with one series or another," said director Yoshikazu Yamashita. The air and ground battles of the Metroid game, for example, started as a Star Fox game, but the team decided that the hovering ship didn't fit well with an Arwing.

Shimamura revealed to Japanese magazine Famitsu (via Polygon) that Donkey Kong's Crash Course (pictured) could have been an Excitebike or 1080 Snowboarding game instead--two franchises which haven't received an update in quite some time. While they may not have been represented in Nintendo Land, at least fans can take comfort in knowing that Nintendo hasn't forgotten about them entirely.

Steve Watts

Editor-In-Chief

Steve Watts' youthful memories are are a blur of pixels, princesses, castles, and Mega Busters. After writing about games as a pastime for years, he got his first shot at a paid gig at 1UP. He's freelanced for several sites since then, and found a friendly home at Shacknews. His editorial duties include news, reviews, features, and lunatic ravings. He lives in the Baltimore-Washington area with his shockingly understanding wife.